


Ghosts

by MilkshakeKate



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Dissociation, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Porn with Feelings, Protective Illya, Relationship Negotiation, Secret Relationship, Sleepy Sex, Train Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-16
Updated: 2016-04-16
Packaged: 2018-06-02 11:15:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6564103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MilkshakeKate/pseuds/MilkshakeKate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Trapped inside this gaudy little wagon-lit, shuttling cross-country night after night, her head is full of pistons and oil. Illya is haunted, and Gaby cannot sleep.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ghosts

The sleeper-car is polished, clad in a brown warp of wood veneer she has come to loathe. It stinks of citrus and beeswax, and is sticky to the touch.

And it’s no more than a bench, really, the bed they share. It has been folded down flat, seat and backrest, to mimic something that could _possibly_ be sold as a bed, if Illya didn’t dwarf it so ridiculously. But Illya is accustomed to sleeping like this. He has always been too big for things.

Gaby is not. Gaby likes to sprawl out in every direction, and has been trapped in this wagon-lit for an entire day, so the novelty of miniature living quarters and quaint little racks and sweet little hooks has quickly worn thin. Plum accents; faux velvet; brass rails for their suitcases, her hanging costumes, his stacked machines. They close in.

Illya has returned to her after eight hours of mingling with Solo and the other passengers. He’d locked the door up tight, kissed her, shucked off his dinner jacket, and told her she looked like a little doll in a little doll’s house. By then she was half way to clawing him — or, really, anything in reach — to pieces, though that wasn't entirely his fault.

His knees press into her calves now, curled up, longer than the whole room when lying flat like this.

 _I’ll sleep. Just one more page_ , she’d said. A barefaced lie. Beside him, an hour later, sitting up, Gaby continues to read her dossier. This wad of research on diesel locomotives and rail systems, not even slightly abridged.

She, a Swiss-German spokeswoman in civil engineering, is due to blend in with the investors at a convention hosted by the capital’s mayor. Between Solo stealing the mayor’s city-wide, unregulated surveillance plans, and Illya providing surveillance of his own, Gaby is to distract the marks by pushing the benefits of diesel locomotives to an otherwise steam-oriented state, still years behind on their overhaul from coal to oil.

Fascinating. _Fascinating_ — she has been practising this word with varying levels of authenticity; her most challenging objective yet to say it with conviction. _Fas_ cinating.

Still, for all her deathly boredom, she is wide awake.

Illya reaches out to find her sitting up, still, against the armrest serving as a headboard. He frowns for the absence before he opens his eyes. Something he really oughtn’t be getting used to. They have talked about this.

“Gaby.” It’s a rebuke, grumbling with sleep.

“I’m working.”

“It is very late.”

“Yes, you should rest.” She tilts her chin at him, looks down her nose. “Tomorrow you will be working hard in the dining car, getting fat on pastries and champagne while I memorise all of this.”

“If it was so dull to read, you would sleep.”

“You know I can’t.”

“I know.” He reaches for the file. “But please. Try.”

She scans a final diagram before Illya folds the front page closed on her lap. He slots the file between his back and the wall, clicks off the reading lamp, pulls her to lie down flat.

“Good,” he says, groggy. His arm is a belt, an unwelcome anchor.

Gaby tries to scoot as far as she can in this joke of a berth. She gives a token of a twist under his arm, which lifts only to fall heavily back down once she has settled with her back to him.

For all her sleeplessness, stress-induced and anxious for the days ahead, she can’t will herself to even close her eyes. She’s behind, still so ignorant. She has to do _more_. Her fingers twitch with it, the need to prepare. She can’t glide blindly into cover like Solo, feign foreign inhospitality like Illya. She has to know her legend. Has to take hold of it and mould it and work with it, bend it to her will. She is very, very good at her work. But first she must work hard.

She waits for him to think he’s won; waits for his even breathing, and the sinking of unguarded weight behind her. Then she reaches back, deathly slow, for the file.

Her elbow is seized. “You have not tried.”

“It is not a matter of _trying._ ” She yanks her arm from his grip. “I’m not _bad_ at falling asleep. I have done it before.”

“You surprise me. I have not seen it yet.”

“Yes you have.”

Illya hums, gentle. "Yes, I have.”

“How do _you_ sleep, so cramped like this?”

“I have slept in worse places.” His arm shifts slackly over her from behind, whole and warm. He presses his hand to the flat of her stomach, where she tightens. “The engine is soothing. You cannot feel it?”

“Of course I can.”

The engine alone had been, besides the train’s renowned wine list she had _yet_ to enjoy, the only aspect that had interested her during the brief. She is supposed to memorise the terminology of its parts, the history of its design, the records set and all of those it has broken. She’ll be turning up to the convention in the damn thing to mark her arrival, push her case for its superiority and punctuality. She doesn’t know a thing, hasn’t been able to concentrate since the minute Illya had returned to her, to undress, to slip into bed beside her without a moment’s hesitation. She isn’t used to it. To him. Perhaps that’s for the best.

“Tell me how it works,” he says.

“Diesel.”

“Hmm.” Sleepy, inviting.

“Diesel engine powers the generator — electric — which powers the motors, the trucks and their wheels, and all the rest.” She reaches up, clicks the little reading lamp on and off. “This, too.”

“Interesting."

“You already know all of this.”

“Yes.”

Gaby seethes. “Then why can I not get fat with business men tomorrow? You, lover of this tiny room, can sit in here and memorise every fact you like.”

“Because,” he says, low and proud and sweet, “You are German.”

“You speak it.”

“Not like you.”

 _And Solo’s German is appalling_ , they agree. When she surrenders deeper into quiet with him, and he believes again that he has won, she slips his hand beneath her waistband.

“Gaby.”

“Hmm?” she guides him ticklishly over her bare skin. “Perhaps I am only restless.”

“We have very busy day tomorrow," he says, and shifts. His composure is faltering. "You must try to rest.”

“So?” she says. “Help me, then.”

“This will help you to rest.”

“Oh, absolutely.”

Illya huffs, completely unconvinced.

Still, he does begin circling his fingertips to find her.

“You could pretend to be into it,” she says, and thrills for his sigh shivering down her shoulder blades.

“This is not good idea.”

Gaby shrugs. Sooner than she’d expected, his other arm sneaks between her body and the mattress through the dip at her waist, to cup her breasts gently, pinch her. He knows his routine, accurate and efficient; knows how to bring her to a perfect peak quickly and quietly. Though quiet may be a necessity, she does not want quick. She wants him glad she’d had this idea to begin with.

Her knees part a little, let him reach for what he wants. She pushes against his body, searching for him, but he avoids her.

“Last thing _you_ need is encouragement,” he says, angling himself away. “Spoilt.”

“You like to spoil me.” She clears her throat, wriggles when he meets her somewhere sweet. “Buying me clothes— a _h!_ And… you take me to nice places.”

“For work.”

“You wouldn’t by other means?”

He answers with a hard kiss to the nape of her neck, tugs her back firmly into his chest.

“That’s what I thought.”

“ _You_ are in no position to be cocky.” He lands another kiss, censuring. “Who has power, here? Me, or you?”

“Me.” She slides over his lap firmly then, finding him. “You’re helpless already. I haven’t even touched you.”

“Me,” he says. “I could stop.” And he does, both hands halting over her skin; hovering, torturous.

Gaby struggles in silence. The need to draw him back by his wrist, have him complete that infuriating, perfect cycle he’d broken… No. A desperation like that means he’s won. Gaby considers reaching for her file out of spite.

“Hmm,” Illya says instead, mercifully returning, the pads of his fingers exploring and coaxing. He slips up to roll over her clit only once before idly teasing around her again, noncommittal.

“I thought you wanted to make this quick?” she says, as evenly as she can.

“ _No_ ,” he corrects her, “I want to make you tired.”

His fingers slide easily now, slick, and for that he gives a smug little hum. He slips his free hand beneath her camisole to brush over her breasts, bringing her to tighten and peak under his fingertips. Another hum, feigning cool disinterest.

Gaby does her best not to acknowledge him, denies him the satisfaction. She concentrates on the engine, on the thrumming of wheels over track and the rhythm there, a perfect machine, rolling on and on and on through the dark, taking her only where it’s built to go. How long is that track? She racks her mind. All the nerves in her body snap where he touches her — nowhere near her brain, where her memory is hazy with tedium of facts, figures. Instead she grows hazier for him; he's stronger now, having decided to please her for himself.

Illya brushes her hair aside with his nose just to kiss the curve of her neck.

She's drifting. The train carries her, floating weightless. Her traitorous pulse and the air in her lungs swill dizzily, intoxicating. The momentum, the forward propulsion, pushing her into him. His touch is like a head rush, a drunken shiver rolling underneath her skin. She's weak for it. Gaby blinks hard, tries again. The rattle over the wooden beams, the iron, the bolts. _Sleepers_ , she manages, those heavy slats in the dirt. _Stone_ _ballasts:_ crushed, hard rock. The air rushes noisily by for the speed, this break through empty land faster than anything here was naturally meant to move...

He breathes a defeated sigh, ghosting over the shell of her ear. Too close. A reflexive river of goosebumps streaks down her, and he teases her nipples where the thrill makes itself shamefully well-known. Illya forms flush against her back, thigh to thigh, his abdominals hot and firm and heavy along her spine, and lower, where she feels every inch of him perfectly, as if he’s under the mercy of her hand too.

“Illya,” she whispers. “You have _no_ idea, do you?”

“Hmm?”

She loops her arm behind him to pull closer, have him roll against her. _So_ , she notices, she certainly isn’t alone at all in being compromised like this. A bad idea, he’d insisted, and yet here he is, indulging and partaking as if it had been his all along.

Illya focuses, returns with heated purpose. Gaby parts her thighs and surrenders to lie on her back, to look at him like this. She rests on his arm as he leans up beside her, works smoothly through and over her with practised confidence, just as he would one of his expensive radios, one of his unguessable machines. He ducks to kiss her because he wants to and because he can. It’s plush, soft, forgiving.

Gaby hums, lacing her hands around his nape to kiss him again, and his touch shifts, slipping deftly over her clit with the pads of two slick fingers and she bucks up into it, this hot wet rise of swelling nerves, desperate and sensitive.

“Good?” he asks.

She runs the tips of her fingers over him, thickening still in his dark briefs, and she nods. She catches the start of his protest but it only drops into a swallowed groan, a clearing of his throat.

“Gaby…”

“Relax,” she says, saccharine. “Busy day, tomorrow.”

He gives a terse smile, not reaching his eyes one bit. He pulls her closer over the narrow bunk, concentrating his touch with an ambition she marks in the shift of his arm, in the stretch of him to meet her where he must. He slips gently inside and crooks his finger, and with the flat of his thumb he presses over that little pink bud and he rolls, pushes, rolls, pushes, _so, so, so_ slowly.

Gaby does make a noise then, a high, infuriated one, before he covers her mouth with his to still her.

“There are others on board,” he reminds her, kissing firmly again when she threatens to cry something louder. “He is only next door along.”

With a sharp, pleasant shiver she grabs his forearm to encourage him, double his pressure. “Solo lives for this.”

“I would rather he did not obtain more ammunition.”

“Then _let_ me,” she manages, mumbling under his lips. “Let me finish, or I’ll call him in.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“Are you so sure?”

Illya pulls back a little, narrows his eyes. He isn’t sure. Not at all. His caress shifts firmly from her slight breasts to her ribs, securing her as if she’ll fall off the bed; or, rather, as if she’ll tear out of the room. Worse: she could stretch over him to rap their secret knock on the veneer to wake Solo, beckon him in like a lost cat, have him find them tangled up, forbidden like this.

Gaby palms along the line of his cock. He swallows his dread for all she is capable of in favour of covering her hand with his, guiding her tightly over him, straining for her. She wants to mouth over him there; take him on her tongue just to watch his need amplify, her name pouring out helplessly among all the Russian.

His hand has stilled between her thighs, so she stills hers too. “Have you finished with me?”

“Are you tired?”

Gaby glares at him, her eyes almost crossing for how close he is. He tucks her hair behind her ear, leisurely.

“No.”

He rolls his eyes, continues.

Gaby squirms and considers clamping her legs together, trapping him. She just _has_ to kick out or turn over or push him away but he goes steadily on, gently kissing her, curling deep inside to meet that dip which, with his next perfect brush over her clit, makes her jolt upwards, shudder out a frustrated moan. She grabs at his undershirt, crinkling it madly in her fingers.

“Patience.”

“ _No_.” She bucks indignantly into his palm. “Illya, I’ll do it myself.”

He shakes his head. “It is not the same.” He smooths over her, shining with all the evidence he needs. “You want me to help you, or you would not have asked.”

“Well,” she says, reddening, “I don’t _need_ you to.”

“I want to do this for you.”

“Then get _on_ with it.”

“No.”

Gaby seals her legs shut, locking him there. Though he’s taken the rest out of her so far, she still has her ballerina’s thighs, trained and unyielding enough to immobilise him. He’s trapped now only because he’s too stubborn to let go. He’d be free if he’d only relent; sacrifice a little, open his palm and slink away. But he wants the prize, so he holds on tight.

“No, _because —_ ” Illya goes on, stretching what he can of his crushed hand, “— when _you_ finish quickly, you always want for more. Like this, you will sleep until morning.”

“You don’t know that.” But he does; surveillance specialist and consummate watcher, strategist. They have done this often enough for him to keep a dependable tally.

“You say: _let me, let me._ Then, you take from me all I can use to help you.” His free arm — the one she might possibly allow him to keep — is still folded beneath her shoulders, so he squeezes her there. He is torn with desire for it, a warm pride, but he admits it steadily: “Your legs are very strong.”

“You have no idea.”

Illya smiles, measuring her. “Come,” he says and, deciding she won’t fight him, he kisses her furrowed brow. “Trust me. Let me work. Then we will sleep, and tomorrow you will have your way, just as you enjoy.”

Gaby scans his features, looking for a catch, a loophole to hook into and tug. But in all his determination to ruin her, he is sincere; truly tired, but willing to be awake with her like this, to do what he must to have her settle. _How magnanimous! As if he isn’t enjoying this himself,_ she thinks, half way to cracking open that file and surviving the rest of the night in celibacy.

Still, she loosens her grip, lets him spread and clench his fist before returning to her. Illya, ever astute, decides she needs an even gentler touch for all the new pulse surging there; after such a tight lock of her legs she’s almost raw for it, fatigued for all that rush of blood. He’s right, and it’s her own fault.

So he concentrates on smoothing along her thighs, tempering, waiting for her.

The train begins to slow. The clank of pistons and hiss of pressurised air announces their arrival at a new station, foreign and unpronounceable. The sickly yellow beam of the platform colours the pull-down blind. Its stretch covers them both in something muted, sallow, and Gaby hadn’t realised until now just how dark the open country had been, suddenly drenched in this overbearing light.

Illya stares at the silhouettes of the few bodies on the platform, darkening and dancing over the blind like shadow theatre. He has frozen. His shoulders are tight and, though he still traces her thighs, his mind is entirely on the window; on the shrill whistles, the suitcases collapsing onto racks, the train’s wheels screeching long after shuddering to a stop. All those dark ghosts.

Gaby gently brushes over his jaw, the cut of his cheekbone and the sour shadow cast there. He hums at her, at the thumb she traces over his stubble, his chin, in an attempt to bring him back.

“Illya?”

He looms possessively over her then, blocking the whole window with his shoulder. He faces her, but his eyes are scrunched shut. Beneath she knows them to be darting, dilating.

Illya waits for the train to fall back into its rhythm, shuttling and rocking and carrying them quickly away, before his idle touch becomes a grab, and he kisses her hard, and with a push of his tongue he sinks back over her.

Gaby snakes her arms around his neck and pulls him closer, kisses him back as firmly as she can. He gets like this, sometimes. Strange, spooked. Holding him helps.

Illya hurriedly pushes back beneath her waistband to trace her skin. His fingers shake with something that isn’t nerves, isn’t desire. With his reflexive tapping low on her stomach, she sighs discreetly, takes his cheek back into her hand.

“It’s only me,” Gaby reminds him, pulling him down to smell what’s left of her perfume.

Illya nods blankly into her neck, smooths methodically between her thighs.

“You don’t have to.”

“I want to.”

She nods, and he covers her, shifting until his thighs flank one of hers. She pulls him down to grind over her, her hands spanning his lower back to encourage him; have him relax, forget the dark thing provoking him, this thing she can’t hope to calm or ascertain. While she carefully watches his blond hair graze her cheek, he responds to the friction over her thigh with a gruff moan and a firmer grip, grinding lower, harder.

Illya must decide it’s time to indulge her pleas because his touch gains strength, intention. He pushes into her again, coaxing up where she needs him and palming over her, still slick for all his effort, until he finds the rhythm he knows will work, has worked before.

Gaby meets him with a surprised little noise and a rise of her hips and he braces her there, suspending her high arch. He quickly has her whispering German, curling up in his grip to stare down at the taut tension of her stomach, where he's pushed up her camisole to see more of her, watch her stutter. She jolts up, one hot strike. Illya's wrist tilts and rolls under the waist of her shorts — peach satin; such formal nightwear, a costume for a newly married woman, her cover — where she barely recognises herself, certain it's really her only by the sharp bolt of her nerves, prickling, rolling deep in time with the thrust and curve of his hand. She braves another glance down her body to find him there, pushing his skill into the dark with all he has, as if there is nothing else he can do.

A sheen of sweat covers her now, drawn out of her though she has barely moved at all. She hasn’t worked for any of it. She wants to touch him, have him come undone for her, but he is miles away from her hands and the rest of the compartment too, so strange and dark and far away. She doesn’t dare kiss him in case he doesn’t kiss back.

Silent, his palm flush and pushing deep, Illya curls his fingertips to meet that sweet spot he knows will make her limp, the heel of his hand rubbing a steady, glorious pressure. He doesn’t let up. Every nerve fires, and Gaby pushes her mouth to his shoulder to stifle the senseless noises falling out of her: his name, the gasps and catches, the begging. She’s drawn out and strung up, all of this so long awaited that when it finally comes in a hot rush her hips pulse into his touch, pleading and thankful, legs pulled from taut to weak and tightening everything else.

Illya works her through, revelling in her tension, her wilting. He traces her again, fixedly watching her body flex up to and away from him, writhing, sensitive. For a moment, she thinks he’ll try again, work to lure another out of her. He looks at her like he will. He looks like he’ll do it all night, whether she can keep up with him or not.

His thumb slips through her folds to become slick again, and he strokes flush over her clit, urging her back to him.

“Illya,” she strains, needing to cross her legs. “Illya—”

With a blunt kiss he pulls his hand away to lie heavily over her. He drags down where he’s so hard and where she feels everything minutely, so much it almost hurts, until she has to still his hips with both hands and all the strength she has.

“Illya. Just— c-calm down. Let me…” Gaby tries to catch her breath, blows her hair out of her eyes. He traces up and down her hips, needing. She feels the thin restraint in his palms, one cool, the other still wet and warm with her. Both worn, ticking, huge.

“Sorry,” he breathes, low, deep. He means it, but it’s sour. She takes shakily to his cheek, trying to read him like this. “You are tired, now?”

“Oh,” she says, having forgotten all about that. “A little.”

Gaby swallows, tries to seek out his smile. It’s too dark to see much, but the small crack of light beneath the door illuminates his harsher angles, the planes of his cheeks. So solemn, like this. Wide awake and hollow.

The wall he’s built and the endless hum of the engine is too much. The machine surrenders no break point; there’s no choice but to maintain, on and on and on. It quickens pulse and urges muscle, encourages movement and progression: keep up, keep up, keep up, but she can’t.

Illya continues palming along her sides, where she’s ticklish and flushed.

“You’re very good,” she tells him, hoping it might help. “Efficient, when you like to be.”

“Thank you,” he says, as if she had handed him a glass of water. She could use one now. She wipes her arm over her forehead, lets it rest there a second.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“No. Not tonight.”

“Alright,” she says. “Don’t forget me.”

Illya nods, his mouth a fine line. He has stopped telling her he won’t, stopped asking how he ever could. He knows what it means. She has said this to him before, in many ways; that the red mist frightens her like this; that she is only a small antidote; that she can’t help at all if he gets lost completely.

She takes the closest piece of him — here, his arm — and kisses the warm crook, the inner crease. By the side of her head, his fingers flex out of a clenched fist, softening. Good.

“Alright,” she says again, pulling him back over her. With all his weight and body heat, all he’d anticipated comes true; she is tired now, worn out and raw. But while he gets comfortable, returning with a low brush of his hips, concern ticks at the corners of her for all his abject silence. This volatility, tripped by nothing but light and shadow. Shadows in the back country, far from anybody he could ever know or fear… He had been just as safe within the train car as they had been beyond the blinds. So, what? What is it, then?

She can’t ask him now. He won’t tell her. She will take all his secrets from him later. She can only soothe and distract until he cools down, and she knows how to do that; wants it just as keenly. No matter how certain Illya’s theory; finishing quickly or finishing slowly, she will always want more from him.

Pushing beneath the hem of his undershirt, Gaby traces all the high-strung muscle beneath. No huff of indignation, no rebuke for keeping him awake after fulfilling his quota. Just... quiet. That lack of duty sets something turning in her stomach, something sharp she can’t shake. He only kneels up, pulls the shirt over his head from the back of his neck, descends on her again. He settles lower to pore over her breasts through the fine fabric of her camisole, pull it aside, take her in both hands to pinch and kiss, tongue and teeth.

She lets him. Her palm sails from one of his shoulders to the other, dipping in the middle where a deep line settles down his spine to his waist, a thousand miles away.

“Ok?” she asks, because she wants to.

“ _Da._ ”

“Come here.” Gaby pulls off the trousseau camisole, has him tug down the little matching shorts to push them up beside the pillows.

So much for quick, for exhaustion, for rest; Illya, the militant sleep enforcer himself, is tracing all he can, grabbing, pulling her to meet his mouth wherever he can’t reach, and Gaby lets him move her this way. He’d fall tearfully to his knees if he caught her wincing under this touch of his. But she is tough, and she likes to see him take what he wants. Often, she tries to decipher what he really needs when he’s mindless like this, because he won’t offer it in words. He takes what he can of her between his teeth and under his tongue and into his hands and she doesn’t question him; because it feels good, because he deserves it, because he moans for her and pushes aside his outrage for indulgence just so he can feast like this, in private, in the dark, like a tsar, a king. Because she won’t tell anybody.

Illya lets her shove his briefs down his hips, have him kick them to the floor. He crowds her, tastes her neck, buries himself there and rolls over her hips, his cock trailing wet and bold up the crease of her thigh. She kisses the scar at his temple, draws him for a while through her hand just to see his eyes flicker and his hips jerk desperately into her touch. She lines him up to take him in. No matter what has pushed him into this stoicism, Illya still groans openly into her shoulder, still takes her hair to gently curl it around his fist, run his thumb over the roll of silky strands. Though perhaps that’s only habit.

He takes her thigh and eases in slowly. Gaby adjusts with a shift, still a little swollen. He seems to notice it, seems to struggle to restrain himself from taking her all at once.

“Not rough,” she warns, very quietly.

Illya nods. He turns into her neck again only to rest there, where his breath rides over her collar bone, the hollow of her throat. She takes his hair in her fist and holds him, lets him fall into a steady rhythm he can keep, taking her words to heart though surely he must need more. It’s a boundary he needs as much as she does. He obeys it.

But he isn’t there. Something is amiss in him, as obvious in his body as it is in the air of the room; slack, lifeless, stale. She does brave a kiss then, pressed flush to his mouth, and she is met with what he must feel is reciprocation. She purses her lips, considers. She’d give the world to be off this train. To be back at her flat on her soft mattress, queen-size, appropriately, spreading him helplessly over it with no more than a palm on his chest to ease him down. To have him tell her off for keeping him up, now, even after all her snapping. Anything.

“Roll up the blinds,” she says.

Illya halts.

“The window. Go on.”

He reluctantly peers over his shoulder. The white shade rebounds the crack of light beneath the door.

“Why?”

“Please.”

Illya takes her thigh, gives her an odd look. He guides himself out of her with a loss she half regrets and he does as she says, rising from the bed to take the beaded chain and bring the world back in.

With the rumble of the train having faded out of mind now, dismissed as white noise, the glide through mountainside and valley had been easy to forget. With the blinds down, they had only been in a tiny room, assaulted by that ugly light only to be sunk back into a worse dark. She had thought that the patchwork of open country might help him; show him that there aren’t any shadows at all when everything is safely, evenly black.

Illya stands for a moment, staring out of the window as it all slips by. 

“Like this?” he asks her, finally.

Gaby searches him, to see if he has brightened at all. The moon is too high to see from this bed, but perhaps he has seen it. Perhaps it had only been the new confines of the space that had spooked him, the skittering of those shadows like reaching hands. Perhaps he had only retreated to her in dead silence because she was hidden there, strategically quiet herself, out of their reach. She hopes it had been for more than that. Hopes that he had only wanted to.

Illya comes back, climbing over to kiss her.

“Gaby,” he murmurs, and he hums pleasantly when she bravely takes to the nape of his neck again. His groan is deep and familiar. He pushes all the sheets away and lies over her, bracing on his elbows to take her cheeks in her palms and part her lips, kiss her with a new passion, breathe a sigh thereafter. He pulls her legs tight around his waist to sink back down.

She wraps around him and guides him in, smiling faintly for the night having filtered into him; having opened him somehow, lightened impossibly by the dark. No questions, she reminds herself. Not yet.

He’s slow to start. He takes his time, touching her to please rather than only to take. How had it worked? His fingers press little red pools into her hips. How had she known? What had she done? He doesn’t tell her, only rolls into her again with a stretch and fill she has come to know but still hasn’t gotten used to.

“Feeling better?” she tries.

“ _Da_ ,” he says, with a strain through another thrust. He pulls her arms around him, has her hold on tighter while he moves, taking her hip in his hand and deepening a little. “Tired?”

“I was.”

Illya lets out a huff, almost a laugh, and she kisses his neck in reward, allows him to get lost in any rhythm he chooses. He chooses deep and slow, and he keeps it up, his sounds raw, easy. She smooths over his shoulders, the vast stretch of him undulating with his effort, a golden field under her fingers. She slips down to grab his ass and he lets out a gruff laugh, responds by pushing deeper and curving up into her with each roll. Gaby barely fits in a moan when he pulls the rest of it out of her, breathing her in, gentling her tongue to yield under his and she chases him, still a thrill to her. Better, now that he knows she’s not going anywhere; now that he can do this to her whenever he wishes.

He touches her, circling again as he thrusts, pressing his open mouth to her shoulder and moaning deeply there, carnal, loud, despite having spent the whole night swallowing her up for even breathing.

“Harder,” Gaby allows him, and catches his surprised glance. She nods for him and he takes her waist to steady her, obeying, speeding up, the push and pull unreal and his teasing of her clit showing no signs of stopping. He pushes her hips up for her, rocking to find the spot and—

“ _There_ ,” she grabs his back so fiercely he hisses. He goes on, rough, quickening his touch and feeling her tightening around his cock for it. He groans so loud, louder than she has yet.

Gaby covers his mouth with her palm but he keeps going, brow furrowing, hot breath pushing forcefully through her fingers.

“Me first,” she whispers, and Illya hangs his head, struggling, nodding, cursing her, and she knows it to be cruel.

With his sudden hurry she’s pulled up into an arch. She holds her breath until she feels she’ll burst, and he’s rolling her firmer still, cock hot and perfect and Gaby shouts out for him, clutching at what she can, dragging his face into her neck and letting out that high, banked breath she’s been saving since they started. It’s almost a sob shuddering out of her, and she nearly laughs, tremulous and weak for it all; the force of it, the powerful size of him, still desperate over her while she’s up two-nil.

Illya exhales roughly, finally, all this swelling heat impossible. He rests his head against hers and hurries on for not long at all, glowing furnace-hot under the palms she presses into his chest. She tightens around him, on and on and on until he spills into her, groaning, collapsing in a mess of sweat and heat with a choke still caught in his throat. That too crackles out eventually. A deep, grateful noise she’s come to love on him.

Gaby soothes him, brushes his hair back the way he likes it.

“Thanks,” she says sweetly.

Illya grumbles furiously into her chest.

They lie still for a while, breathing. She hopes, when he rests his burning cheek on her, that he is falling asleep, finding solace.

“Sorry,” he says instead.

“That’s alright.”

“No,” he starts, and the palm spanning her waist closes in. He doesn’t go on.

“Illya, I won’t sleep if I don’t know.”

“I will not fall for that again.”

“I mean it, this time.” She brushes through his hair, smooths it. “What was it?”

Illya doesn’t answer, only presses his lips firmly to her chest. When he parts, it has been so long she has forgotten it as a kiss, reminded now only by the lack of him there.

“How did you know?” he asks.

“Know what?”

“The window. That I should look.”

“Well, did you need to?”

“Yes.” Illya breathes a tired little gust. “That light, it was the same.”

She waits for him to go on, carding still through his hair. He doesn’t. He’s almost wholly slack on her chest, rising and falling evenly as if lulled to sleep, warm, covered only by her arms around his back and her thighs at his waist. She could easily lie like this for nights and nights on end, but still she would not sleep. She expects he has fallen deeply himself before he murmurs something into her.

“Hm?”

"Before he left the light was the same. At our door.” His head tilts lower, and he takes a long, slow breath. “The officers stood behind the glass. Three of them. I was sitting on the stairs when the knock came, and they took him from the living room. Similar, the noise from the engine. The shadows down the hall, as well, were the same. I have not seen anything so close to it since.”

She does her best not to slow her hand, pry too deeply. “Your father.”

“Yes.”

She stifles her burning curiosity with a kiss to his crown. He sinks deeper for it, pleased to be spared the interrogation.

“Are you all right?”

Illya nods, all she needs. “And you?”

“Yes.” 

He palms down her side. “I was rough.”

“No. Not too much.” She brushes his hair back, lets it fall again. “I would have hit you. Hit you and won.”

“Good,” he says, filled up with contempt. “I did not want you to go anywhere.”

“I’m still here.”

“I know. Sorry, it is needless. I suspect I am still coming to terms with this… arrangement. Temporary.” He shifts back up to his elbows to look her in the eye. “I want to have you for a long time.”

“Well, I want that too.”

“My neighbours,” he begins, very slowly. “They ask if I have a woman.”

“A _woman_?” Gaby scoffs. “And what do _you_ say?”

“That I am working for her.”

“That she’s your boss?”

“No,” he says. “That I am working to have her for myself.”

Something odd quakes in her chest. “You do have me.”

“Not as I would like to.”

“Illya…”

“I know.” He nods. “I understand. Go to sleep.”

“No, it’s not that. I’d like to. Illya, I would...”

“But we cannot.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Then we will pretend. Tomorrow—” he picks up his watch from the side table, glares at her “— _Tonight_ , at six o’clock, come to the dining car.”

“I have work to do,” she says, with no conviction whatsoever.

“I will tell you all I know of these machines. I will order your cocktails, stand beside you. I will answer the difficult questions, the answers you have not covered yet.”

“I don’t need your help.”

“I know this. But I would like to. I would like to help you.”

Gaby wants to have him for a long time. He’d taken the words right out of her like a too-loud sigh, like a threat to be uncovered before the whole world. The sheets are off, and only a flimsy lock holds the door. He can whisper with her, nude and sated, but she can’t hold his hand to walk down the street. How nice it would be to pretend they could do this without permission, without accusation, from their handlers and their countrymen both. She thinks, for a blind and fleeting moment, she could easily risk a burn notice for it.

It fizzles up just as quick, but she has already warmed. Frightening, that certainty. Dangerous.

“All right," she says, chin held high. "Maybe I will.”

Illya nods once. He gently rolls off her and onto his back.

Gaby flops her arm lazily over his stomach. “Are you pretending, now?” 

“Yes. I imagine I will be for a long time.”

She swallows, brings up his arm to curve around her. “Perhaps you won’t _always_ have to.”

He gifts her a small, quizzical smile. It makes this harder, but infinitely easier too; makes her decision for her.

“Suppose we didn’t tell anybody,” Gaby suggests, low. “Back in London, we could meet. You could take me out, if you wanted to. Disguised, maybe, but no cover.”

“I want to.”

“Then do. Visit me. We will go out for dinner, dancing.”

“No dancing.”

“Dancing,” she says, firmly. “Dancing and drinking. Afterwards, chess. If we _must_.”

“I would rather not play at all. You are a terrible opponent, a very sore loser.”

“And _you_ are terrible at dancing. If we are to pretend, we must compromise like real couples do.” The words trip out, more foreign than the language itself on her. She purses her lips.

He lets it go. “To compromise with you is to make deal with the devil.”

Gaby shrugs fondly. “You can take it or leave it. We will carry on like this regardless, fucking when we like.” He flinches a little. “But I know you like this courting of yours, as if we are one hundred years behind. You’re old fashioned. So I am offering it to you.”

“You do not like old fashioned?” he asks, personally affronted. “You do not like how I treat you?”

“It suits you,” she allows. “Suits you, like your old man bedtimes.”

Illya smirks then, pulls her closer. He presses a kiss to her knuckles. “I am not an old man.”

“ _No dancing. I will break hip_.”

“I did not say that.”

“Forgetful, too.” Gaby beams up at him. She runs a firm hand down his stomach, traces the oblique dips at his waist. “Your hip _isn’t_ broken... Fortunately.”

Illya rolls his eyes.

“I very much like the way you treat me,” she says, taking his chin to make him to look at her again. “So tomorrow we will pretend. Treat me like this woman your neighbours want for you.”

“Tonight,” he corrects her, caught between a kiss and another rebuke. “It is very, very late.”

“You don’t regret it.”

“No.” He rolls onto his side to kiss her very closely, soft, with all his heat. He pulls the sheets back over them. “But you _must_ go to sleep. Right now.”

Gaby thinks, tucked up like this, with a head full of dancing and music and Illya’s palm warming her waist at the bar, she might try a little harder.

 

**Author's Note:**

> What happens when a gal listens to FKA Twigs ([1](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQwlWfMzmrg), [2](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFtMl-uipA8)) and [railroad soundscapes](http://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/railroadNoiseGenerator.php?c=0&l=5245252926472813190000) omg...
> 
> Thank you so much for reading!! Time to settle down myself and actually _read_ some fic for the first time in a week... #struggle


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